Summer of Rockets

I give this series two stars for good production values in costume and scenery design. In every other aspect it is dreadful Toby Stevens constant overacting worked ok in the cartoonish Black Sails, but has failed in everything else. The plot of summer of rockers is unengaging, and frankly juvenile. Lastly the heavy and forced political correctness puts the final nail in this mess.

Anything starring Keeley Hawes is going to be worth watching and this little drama is no exception. It's a fun bit of nonsense - very reminiscent of an episode of The Avengers from the late sixties - but far more elaborate. As usual with the BBC, the sub-plots hammer every politically correct stereotype going. The villains are all white, middle-aged, middle class males, the heroes are all either from a minority group or disabled. Of course, the police are racist and the young white men (except for the gay man and the vegetarian) are violent boors. Even the poor little debutantes get a drubbing. All boringly predictable - but it was fun seeing Lily Sacofsky giving one of the nasty young men a taste of her knee! To be fair though, I did enjoy this drama and would recommend it as a lightweight bit of entertainment.

Enough reviews about the series, I enjoyed, excellent, intriguing.

I want to write in response to lots of queries over the ending!

I believe that the daughter had taken part in a make up of the plan that the secret service had inklings about, and that her writer friend was also involved with MI5/6 and had been able to feed in to the comedy episode shown on the TV which brought all the dastardly plans to an abrupt end, after the daughter had unwittingly revealed a conversation with her dad.

So it all makes sense if you take this into account.

The missing son storyline, which again a lot of people were perplexed by, I believe again was that he had provided information to MI5/6 as soon as he had become aware, and had been advised to disappear to protect himself, and his preferred way of vegan life.

Overall, as good as any Agatha Christie. Kept you intrigued and confused right till the end!

I loved the acting, especially the lead lady.

It was a strange era, the 1950's. The Americans had McCarthyism, and we were affected by it, as the Series demonstrated reasonably well. Civil defence was growing, nobody trusted anybody else, and as Mr Petrukin found out, being Jewish put you right under the radar of MI5. This story captured the feel of the era quite well, and was assisted by some great acting and even thought I found this to be a very slow series, it was fascinating and I had to keep watching.

It was helped considerably by a first class cast, especially Toby Stephens as Samuel. He captured the essence of what it feels like to be the only sane character amongst a company of maniacs, and the rest of the cast including Keeley Hawes as his love interest, were all magnificent. I rather enjoyed Timothy Spall's portrayal of the titled gentleman know it all who tries to manipulate his peer group. Characterisation was what kept this series afloat; the plot meandered and the ending fell flat.

I am not too familiar with Poliakoff's stories but I look forward to watching some of his better works, this was intriguing but not satisfying.

Mr P has toned down his usual artificiality, created a time and place that more or less convinces and put together an exciting plot with a real dénouement. He deserves kudos for managing all this after many years of not doing so. Perhaps all the BBC money they have thrown in his direction has started to pay off at last. Toby Stephens is excellent, as is Keeley Hawes (as usual). Everyone else is good too and little Toby Woolf is a delight. There are faults. Yes, there is a coherent dénouement but it's not without clichés (one particularly egregious one involving guns) and some sickly sweetness. Adrian Edmondson's TV shows are embarrassingly unfunny. The subplots, while interesting, are in fact superfluous. There is the one about the missing son, which is included, I guess,to give Keeley Hawes and Clare Bloom things to do. The daughter's daft scenes at Buckingham Palace and the expensive ball with hordes of debs are also of only tangential relevance.